So Good Talk
by lilkawa
Summary: Catherine needs some girl time and finds it in an unexpected person...


_Beauty and the Beast_ doesn't belong to me.

**So Good Talk**

Catherine watched in amazement… and anger as Vincent all but run out of the room leaving her standing alone in the warehouse. She couldn't believe what was happening. She had hardly slept the night before imagining how they were going to spend the day together but no Vincent could barely look her in the eye and he had run out.

Not good. Not good at all.

She stood in the room awhile and then made her way back to her car and drove into town. She really needed some serious girl time but Heather was currently living with their father and she was at work right now; she really wasn't the person she could talk to about her Vincent problems though… she was supposed to have broken up with him.

Tess. She really wished things were back to their normal footing with her partner…former partner and friend but Tess was still angry with her and Catherine couldn't really blame her so she had no girlfriends to talk to.

Which really only left Vincent and JT. She couldn't talk to Vincent about her frustrations with him and she couldn't imagine a weirder conversation with JT than one where they were talking about her and Vincent and their being together issues. That really left only one option.

The Mall.

000

Before Vincent had come back into her life, Catherine used to go to the mall when she felt depressed and window shop. Somehow looking at all the things that she could never afford to buy always made her feel better but since that day when she'd met Vincent and found out who he really was and how he'd saved her life she had begun to go to him whenever she wanted to make sense of stuff. Like she had confessed to him…her normal was with him.

"Catherine."

She turned and saw Brooke standing infront of her smiling. "This is a nice surprise."

"Yes," Catherine smiled at her. "I wanted to see what's new in the shops."

'I just came by to get coffee from that amazing café," Brooke said. "Care to join me?"

Catherine was about to refuse but she had nothing better to do. She had taken the whole morning off, spending a few minutes making nice with her new stepmother wouldn't hurt.

"So how are you?"

"Fine," Catherine replied. "I wasn't there when Darius was killed, so I'm really fine."

"Heather says she's fine as well," Brooke told her, "but she's still shaken up over the whole ordeal."

"It takes time," Catherine agreed, "but she'll be fine."

The coffee and cakes they had ordered for were brought to the table and they drank in silence for a few minutes.

"So?"

Catherine looked up at Brooke. "So what?"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" Catherine asked her. "I'm fine. There's nothing to talk about."

"Your father mentioned that when you were younger you used to come to the mall whenever you had some …issues to deal with. So what's the problem? Maybe I could be of help."

Catherine stared at Brooke in shock. She hadn't thought that her father had even noticed that she was unhappy let alone how she'd dealt with it.

"I understand that I'm probably the last person you'd want to confide in -" Brooke began but Catherine interrupted her, "actually I really could use someone to talk to right now."

"Is it Vincent?"

"What? What makes you say that?"

"Trust me," Brooke replied. "I've had enough man problems to recognise the symptoms. What's he done now?"

Now that she had someone to talk to Catherine wasn't sure that she could really talk to anybody about Vincent. It was too complicated.

"It's complicated," she told Brooke.

"It usually is."

"I mean," Catherine continued. "I thought things were going great a while back, we were sort of seeing each other and of course I was scared. Who isn't at the start of a relationship and then I finally sorted it out. You know, got my act together and guess what his ex shows up and he runs off with her. He actually went off with her to this romantic cabin in the woods. Not that anything happened but still, anyway I told him how I felt but he wanted to see if the old feelings could be rekindled," she paused. "Anyway the ex left and Vincent came back, I told myself that I couldn't trust him, you know, that I deserved better than that but who was I kidding? Anyway we sorted that out as well. We were finally sure that we wanted to be together, I told him I loved him and he said that he is in love with me. But guess what?"

Catherine looked at Brooke who was staring at her silently. "I have a tendency to ...um... go on a bit."

"It's okay. So you two love each other, right?"

"That's what I don't get," Catherine said. "I love him, he loves me but today I took some time off to spend it with him and guess what happened when I went by his place?"

Before Brooke could answer Catherine continued. "He ran away. He actually got dressed and run out of the place as fast as he could. It's so frustrating."

"Maybe he just needs time to sort out some other things he can't bring himself to tell you yet."

Catherine was about to ask what things, they had talked about everything surely, and then it hit her, maybe the experiments had made it impossible for him to be intimate with anyone and he was scared of telling her.

"He could have just talked to me when I went by earlier today," Catherine said.

"He's probably just scared," Brooke told her. "Give him time, he'll tell you eventually."

"You're probably right," Catherine agreed.

"If he doesn't tell you soon though," Brooke said. "Call me and we'll knock some sense into him together."

"I will." She took a sip of her coffee. "So enough about me, how are things with you?"

"You really want to hear about me and your dad?" Brooke teased her.

"No, not at all, but we can talk about other things apart from men, right?"

"We sure can," Brooke agreed. Actually there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

"What is it?"

"You know that hideous green couch in the den?"

"I know," Catherine agreed, "Dad got it at some flea market. So what's the plan?"

"Actually I was thinking that since we're both free now," Brooke said.

"I agree," Catherine told her. "There's no time like the present."

…

What do you think?


End file.
